Dream a Little Dream
by Artabria
Summary: The stone consumed her and left her in darkness. Then she opened her eyes to an empty and endless world.


The cultists that had made him who he was had taken much from him. His humanity, his life, his body, _his name_. But he remembered that cold knife that had taken everything from him, just like he remembered everything that came before the Void, before the cold that dug like sharp fingers deep inside his soul.

He remembered the trust that he had put into those cultists, believing them that he would have a better life with them. He remembered the smiles and the warmth he felt at their acceptance. But four thousand years later, he mostly remembered their betrayal.

He still vividly remembered those fingers tying him to that table, the knife lifting above him and piercing his flesh before the cold took over. He remembered their hopeful faces when he returned as one with the Void, hoping for power.

Now, he thought about the young Empress whose life no longer belonged to herself. There were wolves around her, tugging at her and hoping to use her for their own benefit. Something twisted inside him as the events unfolded, a voice of a young boy screaming from deep within him to do something, to fix a situation he was partly to blame for.

So he led a broken Daud into trapping Delilah into the Void. He granted Corvo his Mark to save his daughter and empress, even though he had no need of it. He kept watch over the child, and insurance against Delilah's plans to use the child's body as a puppet.

And months later, when Delilah was no longer a threat and the Empress sat in her rightful throne, he moved his gaze away from them. Another story over, or at least that's what he'd thought.

He never saw the shadows in the corner of his eye. Delilah had always been a crafty one. Out of all his Marked, she was the one he most regretted.

* * *

The Outsider had originally given Delilah the Mark out of curiosity of what she would do with it. The woman had always considered herself wronged by her own father, the very man that had denied her her place in the Empire as the rightful heir to the throne. The Emperor's betrayal towards his own daughter had buried itself deep into her heart like the roots from a tree, and Emily Kaldwin's existence had only made those roots bury themselves deeper. Why was that child, born outside marriage, granted rights that should have been hers? Why should she be denied her birthright?

After receiving the Mark, her knowledge of her powers had quickly grown. She was smart, learning to use and bend the power of the Void to her will at a faster pace than anyone else before her. Always studying, always trying to learn new ways of controlling and applying her gifts.

The Rat Plague brought with it the foundation of her own court; young women that followed her steps as a witch and with whom she shared her powers and knowledge. It took them two years to find a way to claim the throne that Delilah had been denied.

He had never considered how far Delilah could reach when given the proper tools to achieve her goals.

He touched one of the roots encircling what was left of the altar where he had been reborn. He couldn't help but think how this should have never happened. This future had been unlikely, little more than a passing thought among all the possibilities.

Delilah shouldn't have survived the Void. Not with her sanity intact after all that time alone. Delilah shouldn't have been able to leave the Void.

He could barely see her anymore. Delilah had buried herself deep into the Void, deep into him, and she had used her newfound power to hide herself from him.

He needed help.

That was new.

* * *

Over the last fifteen years, Emily had tried, to the best of her abilities, to forget the events surrounding her mother's assassination and the coup that followed. One thing she had never been able to forget, however, was the face of the man that had killed her mother and the powers he and his people had possessed.

Everyone knew about those chosen by the Outsider, of the Mark they carried and the powers they possessed. The Abbey saw them as the worst of heretics, the Outsider's closest accomplices in corrupting the world.

She had never expected her father to have the same powers as the man that had killed her mother. She couldn't help the horror that had ran through her when she saw her father blink away and appear behind an enemy soldier, driving his sword through his chest before disappearing once more to cut the head of another.

She had recovered quickly from the shock, but when she moved towards her father to help him, she felt her foot stuck in something. She looked down to see both of her feet turned into stone and stared in fear while the stone advanced up her leg. Emily looked at the woman that had claimed to be her aunt, at the perverse smile that was set upon her face.

The stone did its job fast, quickly encasing her in its coldness, but to Emily the progressive numbness had felt like an eternity passed. She tried to reach for her father, who all he could do was stare at her in horror as Delilah's spell turned her into a statute.

And then, there was the darkness, and a cold that chilled her to her bones. When her eyes could see again and her body could move once more, the first thing Emily saw was the nothingness that surrounded her. There were rocks and great slabs of stones floating in this place, some with lights upon them and some with the ruins of buildings. There were others with great arches of stone and houses with missing walls and roofs.

She rose from the cold stone ground she was lying on, patting her clothes to get rid of the tiny pebbles that had adhered themselves to the fabric. There were other figures around her, statues of stone in the shape of cloaked people. For a moment she thought that these statues were also Delilah's doing, others she had trapped, but the center figure of a man raising a twin-bladed knife over an altar told another story that she couldn't decipher.

"Empress Emily Kaldwin," said a voice behind her. "I never expected us to meet."

She turned, seeking the owner of a voice that sounded ancient, and the black eyes staring at her from a youthful face told her exactly where she was.

The Void.

She took a step back the moment she recognized her interlocutor. Here he was, the Outsider, the very being that had granted her mother's killer his powers. A part of her wanted to hit him, scream at him, yell until he apologized for the gifts that he gave so carelessly; the rest of her was scared of acting, wary of the stories about him.

But he had also gifted her father with his Mark, and she suspected now that her return to the throne fifteen years ago had much to do with that gift. So Emily gathered herself, put on the mask her court saw everyday, and faced the man sitting on a thick root that broke through the stone floor.

"Why am I here?" She asked. "Is it your doing?"

"You are dreaming a long dream, Empress," answered the Outsider in a voice that seemed to carry its own echo. "And whether you wake up or not is a decision that no longer belongs to you."

Silence fell between them before she dared to ask her next question. There was much she wanted to know, but there was an answer that she needed more than any other.

"Do you know what has become of my father?"

Delilah had taken the Mark from the hand of her father. With all those enemies around, unable to blink away to another place, he could be-

"He is still alive," said the black eyed man in front of her. "But perhaps that won't be for the best."

"What do you mean?"

There was a mocking tone in his voice when he finally answered. Some sick amusement at the current situation.

"He has lost an Empress again."

* * *

Fifteen years ago he had offered his Mark out of curiosity of what a man so wronged would do when granted such power. After the betrayal and the torture he had suffered, Corvo had surprised him by taking a road with as little destruction and bloodshed as possible. The Outsider suspected that this time the outcome would be different. He hadn't lied to the Empress when he said that losing her had deeply affected her father.

This time his reasons for offering the Mark to the man were far more personal. He hated the idea of needing his help, of needing anyone's help to correct what Delilah's action had brought, but his options weren't many and while Corvo had never fully trusted him, the Mark was an useful tool to bring Delilah to her knees and save his daughter.

There was a new determination in Corvo's eyes when he offered him the Mark once more. A dark look in his eyes that wasn't there the previous time.

* * *

There was wind in this place. Emily was unsure of where it came from, but there was wind here. It made her hopeful for a way out of this place. Perhaps the very idea was stupid on her part, but she hated this bare place and her father and her people needed her, so she jumped from one slab to another, following the direction of the blowing wind.

"You seem determined," commented her sole companion in this cursed place. Emily cleaned her hands from the fall, ignoring the scratched skin of her knuckles.

"There's a song about you back home," she commented as she walked towards the end of this slab, calculating the next jump. "It says that your spirit was bound to this place."

"With blood and screams," he admitted. Darkness surrounded him before he appeared in front of her, halting her progress. "And what do you hope to achieve, your Imperial Highness? That if you follow this wind, you'll find a doorway between both of our worlds? To then use it? You'll certainly find it, Empress, but not one usable by you."

"So there _is_ a way out," she said, barely concealing her excitement. He crossed his arms over his chest, looking at her with a look that seemed to pity her.

"Not for those like us," he answered. "Not for those bound to this place, not for those without a body to return to."

"I'm not bound to this-" she screamed at him.

"Your body has been turned to stone," the Outsider reminded her. "You can't return to your world, but only death grants passage beyond this realm. I told you when we first met, this will be a long dream for you, Emily."

She could feel the tears threatening to fall, so she moved away from him and jumped towards the next slab. She fell, she rolled, she got up. There had to be away out. _She was alive_.

* * *

He didn't say it out loud, she would try to kill him if he even suggested such a thing, but Emily Kaldwin was as stubborn as Delilah. She wanted to find her way out, and she fought against the Void until she found the doorway.

To be honest, it was generous to even call it that. They were just the remains of one a old god, one of his predecessors. The deaths of those like him always carved deep scars into the barrier between worlds, some could even be used as windows.

The Outsider looked at the Empress. She was sitting on the ground, curled in on herself, holding her folded legs against her chest. It was soft, her crying upon realizing that there was no way out, and he didn't know if he should do something about it. He had been alone when he had screamed himself raw, would have someone else's presence helped him back then? He wasn't sure, he had gotten used to being on his own.

Silently, he sat next to her, careful to not touch her. Her crying decreased until it stopped. He turned to see her watching him from between her folded arms. Tentatively, he reached with one hand to tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear. She hid her face away once more.

He let his hand fall. He wasn't sure of what to do. None of them had a say in this situation.

* * *

She had developed a habit of avoiding the altar. There was a wrongness to that place, and she couldn't stand the ever present stench of rotting flowers. The fact that the Outsider didn't seem to like that place didn't calm her nerves about it.

She still hadn't gone back to that window into her world. The Outsider had referred to it as an eye, the remains of some old god from the Void. She had refused to go there since she saw how her father had killed Doctor Hypatia. How could he do such a thing? With the powers granted by the Mark, he shouldn't have had any problems preparing a cure for the poor woman.

She was sitting between the rubble of one of those half destroyed houses that seemed to pop all over the Void. She liked to pretend she was hiding, even though she knew it was more like he was letting her have space. It wasn't like he had any problem locating the only other person in his realm.

"She's not my aunt," she told him when he finally appeared to check on her. It had become a habit of his, to wander around and occasionally visit her.

"Deny the truth as many times as you wish, Empress, but the truth it shall remain."

"Why did I awake here? Did she want me to know she had won?" she asked.

"Hardly," he answered with a resonating laugh that sent shivers through all her body. It was dark and dangerous, like a storm at the sea. "It's true that winning is never enough for Delilah, she likes to make sure that those she defeat know that they have lost.

"But you've always been barely more than a tool for her," he continued. "She tied herself to this place, used her own blood to ensure that her actions won't be easy to undo."

"And we share the same blood," finished Emily disgusted.

"Yes."

There was something there. In his laugh, in his words when he spoke of her supposed aunt, in his hands becoming fists when her name was mentioned.

"What did she do to _you_?" she asked.

"She stole my voice so she alone could grant power," he said.

The Outsider gave her a dark smile and kneeled before her among the rubble. Tendrils of that black smokes that always envelops him caress her face as he leans close enough to whisper on her ear.

"But the Void is infinite and carries my echoes well," he whispered to her. "And it never fully leaves those it has touched."

* * *

It was cruel. _He_ was cruel and she didn't understand how this could be her father. She was no fool, she understood that this was a coup and that leaving those that wish for your death was a luxury that his father didn't have. But she has seen how he went out of his way to kill soldiers that weren't a threat to him, she had seen him subject Jindosh to a fate worse than death with a sick satisfaction shining in his eyes and she didn't understand how this could be the same man that raised her.

"Was he like this last time?" she asked the Outsider. "Fifteen years ago, was it like this?"

"He killed them all last time," he told her. "He didn't want to give them a second chance to plot against you. The so-called Loyalist... Well, he had no wish for you to see all that blood."

"But was he cruel, like this?"

"No."

"Does he even know I'm here? Does he even know that I'm not gone?" she looked at him. "I know you have spoken with him. You have to tell him to stop, at the very least let me speak with him!"

"As you wish, but you may not like who he has become."

She signaled towards the window in anger.

"I have seen who he has become! And this isn't him!" She curled her fingers into a fist to hide their trembling. "He needs to know I'm alright, that he just need to get to my statue and reverse the spell. You said it yourself, he thinks he has lost another empress, but that's not true!"

He stared at her, considering her words.

"As you wish, then."

* * *

He didn't know how to deny her request. She was so hopeful that her words would turn her father away from the future he was currently walking towards. He didn't know how to tell her that, no matter if she talked with him or not, the path her father was walking wasn't going to change. That future where Corvo freed his daughter from her imprisonment was disappearing moment by moment.

But she was hopeful, and he had been wrong before about Delilah, and perhaps he was wrong about Corvo this time.

So after taking Corvo to the altar and explaining to him what Delilah did to bind herself to this place, he took him to another place and observed from far away how Emily hugged her father with tears of joy at finally seeing him.

"You're here. You're safe." He heard Corvo's muttered words to Emily and he could feel how a part of him froze at those words.

"Father?" Emily voice sounded small when Corvo gathered her against his chest and kissed the top of her hair.

"You're _safe_".

He could feel as a future died with those words.

* * *

"What happens if I remain here?" she asked him one day. "If I stay as a statue and I can't move on?"

It had been days since Corvo's visit and she had started to understand that her father was gone.

"You remain here."

"That's it?" she said. "Can't you Mark someone else? Ask them to free me?"

"Blood is... powerful," he explained to her. "Delilah's spell is not that easily unmade. Even if he wanted, he wouldn't be able to free all the others Delilah has turned to stone. Only you."

Emily stared at the statue that looked like her and all the others that surrounded it. The first time she had found this part of the Void, it had just been her statue and her empty throne. There were so many more statues now.

She couldn't help but worry about what would happen with her Empire now that all these people had been turned to stone. She could recognize nobles and important businessmen among those stone faces. She had seen the state of Dunwall and it reminded her too much of the Rat Plague that her Empire was still recovering from.

"What happens if they break?"

"They'll be simply gone," he told her as he rested his back against a side of her throne. "Stone can't be alive, neither can't it die, so they won't enter the Void or move beyond it."

"And me?" she asked, her voice small and afraid.

"Delilah is tied to the Void, and her blood ties you."

"But not for long. That was the plan, wasn't it? To unbind her and then kill her."

Emily knew she sounded afraid, and she didn't think she had ever been this afraid. She feared being trapped her forever, but she couldn't stand the idea of simply being gone.

"Once Delilah is gone, will I simply disappear from here? Will I be gone?" she asked him again even though she already knew the answer.

Silence fell around them and she heard him approach. She didn't bother with looking up, afraid to find pity in his eyes.

"No. Not if you don't wish to," he finally answered. She looked at him surprised as he took her hand in his and lifted it to his mouth. His lips kissed the back of her hand and while they were cold, her skin quickly warmed as black lines drew a familiar symbol on her hand.

"A promise," he told her.

* * *

It was like each breath took a bit more of her life away. The Outsider had told her that the Mark would keep her anchored to this realm long enough for her to bind herself to it as Delilah had done. She didn't delve too much on why he was allowing it, or on his comments about how intrusive he found Delilah, about how he hated that the witch was a part of him.

"You're hesitating," he commented. He sat next to her on the altar, his hand slightly touching hers.

"I keep waiting for him to change his decision," she answered. "Everyone always says that you can see the future, is it true?"

"I can see possibilities," said the Outsider. "What's more likely to happen and what isn't."

"When did you know my father was gone?" she finally asked him.

"Since your father took the good doctor's life," he answered. "All the other futures started to die that day."

"I will use it, you know? This power you're giving me," Emily told the Outsider. "I refuse to let my empire suffer under a mad man."

"I know."

Emily nodded and rose from the altar, the Outsider also moving away in a dark cloud. She didn't have any weapons on her, but the stone knife that the figure was holding above the altar was sharp enough for her purposes.

"Blood and intention. Seems too easy."

"Finding this place is the hard part," said his voice from behind her.

"Ah."

She was reaching towards the knife when she felt his arms envelope her. She could have easily moved away from his embrace, but she allowed him to gather her against his chest.

"There's a way away from this place, from me, if someone would grant it," he whispered. "A knife made of bronze and with a twin blade. You have seen it before."

Her eyes widened, remembering that particular knife. What had become of it?

"It may also grant your freedom," he whispered again before letting go.

"Thank you," she told him before slicing her palm with the stone knife.


End file.
